Contents

History

In 1812,
Elias Glenn, a district attorney, established a county seat near what is currently known as
Brooklyn Park. He named his property "Glennsburne".[2]

The name was changed to "Glennsbourne Farm", and eventually "Glenburnie", as the property was passed through Glenn's descendants. Records also show the name as "Tracey's Station" and "Myrtle", after local postmaster Samuel Sewell Tracey and one of Tracey's boarders, before the final decision was made.[2]

In 1854,
William Wilkins Glenn, Elias Glenn's grandson, incorporated the Curtis Creek Mining, Furnace and Manufacturing Company into his family's property.[3] The business flourished during the 19th century, and with it came several thousand acres of land in northern Anne Arundel County.[citation needed]

Upon the death of William Wilkins Glenn, his son, brother and nephew began to manage the family's business affairs, and Glenburnie became an official state subdivision in 1888.[3][4] The Glenn family contracted George T. Melvin and Henry S. Mancha to lay out and promote the town. It would not be until 1930 that postmaster Louis J. DeAlba decided two words were better than one, and gave the town a final name change to the current Glen Burnie.[4]

Buildings

Courthouse, Glen Burnie

Among the earliest Glen Burnie schools was First Avenue Elementary, built in 1899. The oldest area church is St. Alban's Episcopal, which was built in 1904, with many of its bricks dating back to Marley Chapel, an early Maryland parish from the 1730s. Crain Highway, one of Glen Burnie's main thoroughfares (named after State Senator Robert Crain), opened in 1927 and Ritchie Highway (
Maryland Route 2, named for ex-Governor
Albert C. Ritchie) followed in 1939.[4] Ritchie Highway carried nearly all
Baltimore-area traffic headed for
Annapolis and the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge until an alternate bypass road,
Interstate 97, opened in the 1980s.

Until 1950 the
Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad provided passenger and freight service through Glen Burnie from Annapolis to Baltimore; passenger service ended in February 1950 due to increased competition from buses and private automobiles, but freight service continued until
Hurricane Agnes did so much damage to a trestle crossing the
Severn River in Annapolis that the trestle was condemned for use by trains by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1960s. (The trestle remained as a haven for fishermen and crabbers until it was dismantled.) North Glen Burnie is now served by the
Baltimore Light Rail system's
Cromwell/Glen Burnie station.

Schools and churches were built in the ensuing decades, and construction was completed on
Harundale Mall, the first enclosed
shopping center east of the
Mississippi River, in 1958.[4] It was one of the first shopping centers to be called a "mall" and was developed by
James W. Rouse of the
Rouse Company (which also developed nearby
Columbia, Maryland). The mall was developed in a joint effort with a local real estate developer, Charles Steffey. The original planned location was not on Ritchie Highway but on Crain Highway (the main arterial for Glen Burnie). Charlie Steffey and Jim Rouse negotiated unsuccessfully with the "city fathers" of Glen Burnie, offering to regenerate the (then failing) center of town with their revolutionary concept. The "sticking point" was that the intersection of Crain Highway and Quarterfield Road (the proposed location) habitually flooded in even nominal rainstorms, to the point of cars being up to their doors in the river that ensued.

The "city fathers" decided that the advantage of having the "mall" there was overshadowed by the cost of fixing the storm water situation and declined. As a result,
Glen Burnie Mall followed in 1962.[4]Marley Station, another large shopping center, opened in February 1987.[4] The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration office building employs many people in town. In the 1970s, developers tried to make Glen Burnie more urban by building and funding new projects, projects like Empire Towers in 1974, or Crain Towers in 1990, then with the addition of a
Anne Arundel Community College branch in the town center. In 1965, North Arundel Hospital opened as a community hospital,[4] but as it was constantly overflowed with patients, the University of Maryland Medical System bought the hospital in 2000[5] and renovated it to accommodate more patients and equipment.

According to the
United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 18.0 square miles (46.7 km2), of which 17.3 square miles (44.9 km2) is land and 0.69 square miles (1.8 km2), or 3.95%, is water.[1]

As of the
census[13] of 2000, there were 38,922 people, 15,210 households, and 9,977 families residing in the CDP. The
population density was 3,182.1 people per square mile (1,228.8/km²). There were 15,902 housing units at an average density of 1,300.1 per square mile (502.0/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 81.11%
White, 13.52% Black, 0.35%
Native American, 2.40%
Asian, 0.07%
Pacific Islander, 0.78% from
other races, and 1.78% from two or more races.
Hispanic or
Latino of any race were 2.46% of the population.

There were 15,210 households out of which 29.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.1% were
married couples living together, 13.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.4% were non-families. 27.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.07.

In the CDP, the population was spread out with 23.7% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 32.3% from 25 to 44, 22.1% from 45 to 64, and 12.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.2 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP was $45,281, and the median income for a family was $51,845. Males had a median income of $35,957 versus $27,078 for females. The
per capita income for the CDP was $20,170. About 5.9% of families and 7.7% of the population were below the
poverty line, including 10.2% of those under age 18 and 9.1% of those age 65 or over.